- “Sen. Kamala Harris introduces bill to lengthen school day by three hours” [Yelena Dzhanova, CNBC]
- “The Hidden Costs of Chicago’s Teacher Strike” [John McGinnis, Liberty and Law]
- “The logic behind school busing is back. And so is flight from government-operated schools.” [Matt Welch, Reason, mentioning new report on controlled choice by David Armor for the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom]
- Ambition of suppressing or even banning private schooling [earlier] by no means confined to the UK’s loony-Left Labour Party, so be ready for it [Ira Stoll, Education Next]
- “The Seattle school district is planning to infuse all K-12 math classes with ethnic-studies questions that encourage students to explore how math has been ‘appropriated’ by Western culture and used in systems of power and oppression” [Catherine Gewertz, Education Week; “framework” via Amir Sariaslan on Twitter]
- “Threatening Teachers’ Ability to Control Their Classrooms: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights gets it wrong on school discipline.” [Gail Heriot] Survey finds significant rise in number of teachers attacked by students [Hans Bader; earlier here, etc.] More: Max Eden, Quillette.
5 Comments
The idea that kindergarteners should be exposed to this sort of thing is preposterous. It’s so counterproductive as to be evil. Are we going to bring the poison of grievance into kindergarten class? Why can’t we just run a clip of Furious Styles in “Boyz in the Hood” where he says that the math is universal? Was Furious Styles, the so-called Malcolm and all the others rolled into one, not “woke” enough for today? Or we could go to “Straight Outta Compton”: ” Y’all better gangbang them books.”
For those who love movies, Boyz in the Hood has an all-time great line regarding the foray into Compton: “Rick was a shivering b ____.”
This is a depressing thing—these educrats are affirmatively harming kids. It’s sad.
Regarding Sen. Harris,
When did the Federal Government determine teacher salaries or school schedules?
I was under the impression that the state and local school boards were in charge of that.
I understand that she has to fund her Free Daycare” program somehow, but I see this as being a bit overreaching.
This is where the federal government says to the state and local governments, “Of course you can do whatever you like. But if you don’t conform, you’ll lose billions of dollars in federal grants.”
This plan won’t fund anything. It will cost. Her website says about the teacher raises: “We estimate this plan’s cost to the federal government will be in the range of $315 billion over ten years.” The plan to keep schools open is a pilot program which will give grants of up to $5 million over a 5 year period to 500 schools, so the math on that says it will cost $2.5 billion. (There are in the neighborhood of 100,000 public schools in the US, so extending such a grant to all schools would cost $500 billion dollars over 5 years, by my math.) The separate grants to keep schools open during the summer look like they would cost $6.5 billion over a 5 year period.
It’s also worth noting that the school day itself is not necessarily extended if the grant is accepted. The school must offer “high-quality, culturally relevant, linguistically accessible, developmentally appropriate academic, athletic, extracurricular, enrichment, or community-based learning opportunities, for students from at least 8 am to 6 pm (or different hours if determined appropriate due to the needs of the community) Monday through Friday during the school year.”
I found the text of the bill here.
The logic behind banning private schools appears to be that once the children of the wealthy are forced into public schools their parents will work to ensure they are quality public schools.
Which might work, except that the same legal and social mindset which forces all children into the same public schools will most likely also enforce all of the policies which help make many of today’s public schools bad (poor discipline, passing failing kids, new educational fads).
In reality so long as Washington DC schools are bad there will be a large, powerful constituency opposed to any national attempt to bad private schools.
How many congress critters do you imagine have their kids in public schools, either in DC or in their home state/district?
My guess would be none.
Banning private schools in the US at the national level is DOA.